EBC Green Stuff Brake Pads
These low dust, high-performance brake pads will Eat Brakes Cold.
This page last modified on March 19, 2005.
After nearly two years with these pads on my Volvo S70 T5, I've finally given up on them. For all of the gory details, read on...
April, 2003
After a
horrible experience with PBR Deluxe brake pads, I switched to
EBC "Green Stuff"
brake pads. I first learned about these pads through their
advertisements in niche publications like Grassroots Motorsports Magazine.
More recently, online retailer Tire Rack
has been selling them, and that's where I got mine. What sold me on them
were some comments in some BMW forums that echoed my concerns about the
PBRs, but highly praised the EBCs as an alternative.
I've put a few thousand miles on the EBCs so far, and much of that was in
rain conditions that would have given fits to the PBRs. EBC claims low
dust, and that certainly seems to be the case, although the dust is not as
light in color as the nearly white, asbestos-laden dust of the PBRs.
But they are still a marked improvement over the stock pads.
The wheels will look clean, even after driving home from the car wash. :)
After a few weeks though, some brown colored dust can be seen on the wheels,
but nothing like the blackness of the stock pads.
Cold braking is excellent, pedal feel is comparable to the stock Volvo
pads -- not mushy like the PBRs -- and when you really get on them, these
pads feel like they want to suck your eyeballs out, almost like the Hawk
HP Plus pads on my RX-7. For autocross or club racing, though, I'll stick
with my Hawks or some other higher heat capable pad.
Lastly, they don't squeal, squeak, moan or otherwise vocalize while in use. That
may have something to do with the
Permatex Disc Brake Quiet
that I sprayed on the back of the pads during installation. This product is available at many (most?)
auto parts stores.
With all of this in consideration, it would seem that EBC Green Stuff pads would be an
excellent choice for any street-only car.
December 8, 2003:
Several months and several thousand miles have passed since I wrote the words above,
and they appear here largely unedited from what I wrote when I first installed the
Green Stuff pads. During that period, I've read quite a few comments about these pads,
mostly favorable. But one criticism that I've read should be given further comment:
that the EBC Green Stuff "run hotter than most pads and warp stock rotors on cars that
come with weak rotors." That writer was on to something, very likely describing what
someone felt through their brake pedal, but the explanation of the cause does
not quite fit in with my own experience.
I have not experienced, nor have I ever heard about, EBC Green Stuff pads causing
rotor warping. I have experienced, however, an occasional condition that feels like rotor
scoring, but the rotors always appear to be fine. (Yes -- I've checked.) The problem,
when it occurs, is always short-lived after the first drive of the day, and disappears
after a little casual braking. (Consider that warped rotors would not straighten out
so easily, so there must be another mechanism at work here.) I'm fairly convinced
that it is not rotor scoring at all, but has to do with uneven deposits of the Green
Stuff's brake dust on the surface of the rotor. My suspicion is that the (Kevlar-based?)
pad material of the Green Stuff does not adhere to the high-carbon brake rotors as well
as the pad material in OEM or aftermarket semi-metalic pads.
I would still recommend the EBC Green Stuff pads, but I have to acknowledge that even they
are a compromise. They offer excellent braking for typical street driving, under any
weather conditions, and they are a drastic improvement from the stock pads in terms of
brake dust. But if a rare pulsation in the brake pedal would be troubling to you,
I'll advise sticking with either the stock pads or another semi-metalic, aftermarket pad.
For more information, I highly recommend reading Caroll Smith's excellent article about
braking performance:
http://www.stoptech.com/whitepapers/warped_rotors_myth.htm
March 19, 2005
Rotor Scoring. :(
The "sensation that felt like rotor scoring" that I described above kept getting worse. In an earlier post to this page, I said that this "scoring sensation" came and went, and that I could live with it. Eventually, the sensation came and didn't go away.
I recalled the earlier comment about "warping weak rotors" and decided to try another brand of rotor. The rotors that I had first used with my set of EBC Green Stuff pads were made by ITT, and were purchased at a local import auto parts store that I've always had good experience with. I've purchased Brembo rotors from them, for another car, that were sold under a different brand name -- the inner packaging said Brembo, even though the outer box was labelled by a distributor, and for all that I knew, the ITT rotors were Brembos as well. But I wasn't sure, and I had written so favorably about the EBC pads that I wanted to give them another chance, this time with a known-good brand of brake rotors. So in July of 2004, I ordered a set of Brembo front rotors from Tire Rack.
When the new rotors arrived, I promptly removed the ITT rotors, only to reveal a 1mm groove on the inside of the driver's side rotor. Interestingly, there was no evidence of a corresponding protrusion in the friction material of the EBC green stuff pads, so I felt confident with my decision to use the new Brembo rotors with my few-thousand-miles-old Green Stuff pads.
A few months of trouble free driving had me convinced that I made the right move, and that the EBC Green Stuff pads were a good match with Brembo rotors.
Then it started again. Grrrr!!!!
This time, I didn't hesitate to order up a new set of pads, but I had a hunch that I would be able to continue to use the existing set of mildly scored rotors. As it turns out, they weren't so bad:
Interestingly, the Green Stuff pads barely showed any evidence of this abnormal wear on the rotors:
I've given some thought to what it is about these pads that might cause rotor scoring. At the same time, I'm recalling numerous advisements that I've heard or read against using "track-only" pads on a street car. Now, I realize that the Green Stuff pads do not use a track-only compound, but the warning still seems to apply: when using track pads for street driving, where braking surfaces almost NEVER reach the temperatures that are encountered on a dedicated "road course" -- think "touring cars" -- the pads will EAT YOUR ROTORS if you drive on them while the brakes are cold. I've seen this on street cars used at performance driving schools when the students weren't attentive to the instructors' warnings to not take their track-prepped cars to the local restaurant for lunch without changing their pads first. Maybe the same thing is going on with the EBC Green Stuff pads. They did have great braking from highway speeds, which is typical of the performance from a street/track pad.
But it doesn't really matter -- that's it for me! I'm done with the EBC Green Stuff pads. Like I did after my experience with the PBR Deluxe pads, I'll be telling everybody that I can about what's wrong with these pads.
